
Description of files to replicate the results of the paper: ?Policy Institutions, Volatility and Economic Growth? by Antonio Fat�s and Ilian Mihov.

There are three files needed to replicate the results:

1. GV2013.dta. This is the data file in Stata format (version of Stata used 12.1 bot for Windows and Mac). 

2. Program 1 Fatas Mihov ReStat 2013.do This is the Stata program that generates the output for Tables 1 through 6.

3. Program 2 Fatas Mihov ReStat 2013.do This is the Stata program that generates the output for Tables 7 and 8.

To run the programs (in Stata) place the "do" file and the "dta" file in the same directory, or provide a path in the "use" line.

Data description: 

Real government consumption ? General government final consumption ex- penditure (constant LCU). General government final consumption expenditure includes all government current expenditures for purchases of goods and services (including compensation of employees). It also includes most expenditures on na- tional defense and security, but excludes government military expenditures that are part of government capital formation. Data are from World Development Indica- tors. Series identifier in the original data set: General government final consumption expenditure (constant LCU) (NE.CON.GOVT.KN).
Real GDP ? Real GDP in constant local currency units from World Develop- ment Indicators. Series identifier in the original data set: GDP (constant LCU) (NY.GDP.MKTP.KN).
Price level ? GDP deflator from World Development Indicators. Series identifier in the original data set: GDP deflator (NY.GDP.DEFL.ZS).
Index of oil prices ? logarithm of petroleum spot price from International Financial Statistics. Series identifiers in the original data set: Average crude price (US dollars per barrel, 00176AAZZF...).
Data series used in the cross-sectional regressions:
Real GDP per capita ? Real GDP per capita on Purchasing Power Parity basis from Penn World Tables (version 6.3). Series identifier in the original data set: rgdpch.
Investment price ? Price level of investment on Purchasing Power Parity basis from Penn World Tables (version 6.3). Series identifier in the original data set: pi.
Government size ? government share of real GDP per capita from Penn World Tables (version 6.3). Series identifier in the original data set: cg.
Openness ? logarithm of the sum of imports and exports as percentage of GDP from World Development Indicators, CD-ROM 2002. Series identifier in the original data set: Exports of goods and services (percent of GDP) (NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS) and Imports of goods and services (percent of GDP) (NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS).
Political system ? dummy variable that takes a value of 1 for presidential regimes and 0 for parliamentary regimes. Data for 51 countries are from Persson and Tabellini [2001]. Series identifier in the original data set: pres. From the Database of Political Institutions (Beck et al. [2000]), for 40 countries. The DPI variable system is recoded from the original 0, 1, 2 values to a dummy variable
Policy Volatility, Institutions and Economic Growth 10 that takes a value of 1 for presidential regimes. Series identifier in the original data set: System.
Electoral system ? dummy variable that takes a value of 1 for majoritarian systems and 0 for proportional systems. Data for 51 countries are from Persson and Tabellini [2001]. Series identifier in the original data set: maj. From the Database of Political Institutions for 40 countries. Series identifier in the original data set: Pr.
Number of elections ? the average number of elections over the time period for which macroeconomic data are available. The series is constructed as the sum of legislative and executive elections from the Database of Political Institutions. Series identifiers in the original data set: legelec and execelec.
Constraints on the executive ? from Henisz [2000]. Updated from author?s web-site. Calculated as the sum of four dummy variables indicating the existence of government branches independent of the executive. Series identifiers in the original data set: L1, L2, J, F.
Primary enrolment ? Enrolment rate in primary education in 1960 originally constructed by Barro and Lee. Data are posted by Sala-i-Martin et al. (2004) on the AER web-site.
Log European settler mortality ? Log of estimated mortality of European settlers during the early period of European colonization. See Acemoglu et al. (2001) for data description.
Data for Table 4, column 1 is from Sala-i-Martin et al. (2004).
List of Countries
We use annual data for 93 countries over the period 1960-2007. The choice of our sample is dictated by data availability on output and government consumption with the requirement that we have at least 20 years of data for each country.
Algeria Australia* Austria* Bangladesh Belgium* Benin? Bolivia Botswana Brazil Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Canada* Cape Verde Chad Chile* ?Colombia ?Comoros? Congo, Rep. ?Costa Rica* ?Cote d?Ivoire Denmark* Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt, Arab Rep. El Salvador Ethiopia ?Fiji Finland* France* Gabon* Gambia, The Germany* ?Ghana? Greece* ?Guatemala ?Guinea Guinea-Bissau Honduras? Hong Kong*, China Iceland* India Indonesia Ireland* Italy* ?Japan* Jordan? Kenya? Korea, Rep. Lesotho Madagascar Malawi Malaysia? Mali Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Morocco Mozambique Namibia Netherlands* New Zealand* Nicaragua? Niger? Norway*? Pakistan? Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru ?Philippines ?Portugal*? Rwanda? Senegal? Seychelles? Singapore? South Africa* ?Spain*? Sweden* ?Switzerland* ?Syrian Arab Republic Thailand?  Togo? Trinidad and Tobago* Tunisia ?Turkey? Uganda? United Kingdom* United States* Uruguay*? Venezuela, RB*  Zambia ?Zimbabwe
The countries with an asterisk are in the group of rich countries with over $6,000 income per capita in 1967-69.



